Building/Finding/Creating/Imagining Communities

I’ve always wondered how communities work. Are they existing structures that can be found? Are they constructed? Or are they only a part of our imaginations? While there are plenty of theories out there, I wanted to know how they work in real life and how people found them or made them work.

Earlier this month I was invited to take part in an oral history. The oral history was part of a gathering of Asian Women United. The women gathered around to hear one of their older member’s oral history and they all took turns in asking questions. Although these women had known their fellow member for several years, they had never quite had the opportunity to sit down and hear her entire story. I was truly fortunate to take part in this process and not only hear one woman’s amazing story from Trinidad to New York City, but also to witness the “community” in these women.

I had heard about these women and learned about them because I processed their collection, which is held at the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. I learned some of the members names, read some of their stands on issues (from their notes and newsletters), and wondered more about who these women were beyond the papers that were in the box marked by a collection number. Meeting these women and watching them catch up with one another allowed me to witness a part of this group that was somewhat hinted at in some of the newsletters, but could only be seen in person. Throughout the last thirty years as each woman changed and grew, the other women supported her and were supported by her. There are still some complexities and details that cannot be documented about this living, breathing community of women that is still providing support for each other. The archivist in me wanted to pull out my camera and my notebook to start recording and taking notes (even before the oral history began). The woman in me wanted to enjoy the moment and take the opportunity to get to know some of the people beyond the names I had seen in the records.

Through three previous oral history interviews that I did with the women before this group oral history, I was told that when they first began in the late 1970’s in New York City, there were no other Asian American women’s groups that were created to really support each other. There were several other groups that formed for certain issues, but not one that was regularly meeting for a broad range of issues. And from those same interviews, I felt that most of the time the women felt it was much more important to express the friendships formed by these women and the support that they gave each other than the actual work that was done. As they looked back on the last 30 years, they could not remember all the details of every issue they got involved in or all the activities they had done, but they remembered the desire to really educate themselves and each other on the various issues going on at the time. (This could have also been to the fact that the group’s political activities were mainly in their early years, nearly twenty years ago. In the mid ‘80’s they decided to reformat the group and focus only on the support network aspect of the group.) They felt it was important to be educated not only on issues about Asian Americans or women, but all kinds of social injustice or workers rights’ issues. These women were building a community with each other, but also reaching out to build community with other people.

For me, community is something that is built, found, created, and imagined. Communities are built and created in a time when people need to gather together. Race or ethnicity is not what ties people together, but rather a need for support among people who also want to create a safe environment for them to exist. Although these women may check the same “Asian/Pacific Islander American” box on the census, they are a diverse group of women who come from all sorts of backgrounds (wealthy/poor, from California, Chinatown NYC, or Long Island) and experiences. In 1978 when they officially formed, they found a group of women who were as eager to be involved in social issues as they were. By 1986, the women were still interested in providing support for each other, but were no longer as interested in AWU’s political activities. They had become involved in participating in activities with other organizations, building their own families, focusing on their careers, or other matters. At their annual retreat, they re-imagined their own community and decided to continue on as just a social networking group. The friendship that continues is the one that I witnessed a few weeks ago. In this same right, the Asian/Pacific American community is something that is made up of many communities that are built are certain ideas, formed, then re-imagined at different points in time.

Then, how can we define an Asian/Pacific American community through archives if we are an ever-changing community?

(to be continued…)

Going Digital

“We’re living in a digital age.” I’m still trying to figure out what that means, especially what it can mean for archives.

The Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library (HIDVL) is a revolutionary display of what digital archives can be and how it can be shared worldwide. At their recent 10th year anniversary celebration, they launched their new website. The archive provides artist profiles three languages (English, Spanish, and Portuguese) to accommodate for their audience located all over the Americas. The videos are also provided in high- or low-resolution to accommodate for those with faster or slower internet connections.

This archive makes me think of my own interest in creating an archives of Asian/Pacific American activism. My mind is drowning with questions of what an Asian/Pacific American digital archive of activism would look like. To begin:

• Who would work on it?
  • Who would dedicate the many hours to uploading the footage, tagging the videos with metadata, and providing access to the video?
• Who would contribute to it?
  • How do you create an inclusive website that encourages people from all parts of the Asian/Pacific American community to contribute?
  • Can we also make it a space where everyone can contribute information, pictures or stories?
  • Who would we interview or collect oral histories from?
    • Community leaders?  Executive Directors of non-profit organizations? Policy makers? Teachers/Educators? Families? Participants of community programs?
• Who would be the audience for such a website? People in the United States? Asia? the Pacific Islands? An even broader international audience?
  • If we target an international audience, how will we accommodate them? How many languages will we need to provide the information in? How many forms of resolution?
• What can the digital archive offer us that paper archives cannot? What is it still lacking?

We may not have answers to all of these questions, but the HIDVL provides an example of a great way to involve community in building their own archives.

________________________________________________
The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

http://hemi.nyu.edu/aboutus/index.html

Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library

http://hidvl.nyu.edu/

How The Personal Becomes Political in Archives

Seven years and one week ago, my dad woke me up from my sleep to tell me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I sat in disbelief as I watched the news from my television 3,000 miles away from New York. My family and I were restless that day, wanting to help in any way we could, so we drove over to the Red Cross to donate blood. As a personal memory, I remember it as a day of spending time with my parents, who I rarely saw because of their busy work schedules. I remember it as a day of great sadness and vulnerability. The things I remember from that day are uniquely my own, and yet when I share my experience with others it becomes something that we can connect on.

The September 11 is a digital archive that has worked to collect the different stories and experiences of everyone and anyone who wishes to contribute. “The Archive contains more than 150,000 digital items, a tally that includes more than 40,000 emails and other electronic communications, more than 40,000 first-hand stories, and more than 15,000 digital images” (from the 9/11 Digital Archives website). Everyone has a story about where she or he was and what she or he did on September 11^th, but when you collect the various stories and put them in a public space that everyone can access, the meaning of their personal story changes. The collection represents a community memory. Although some experiences are very different from others, there is a power of recollection in sharing these stories.

Archives are all about how the significance of one’s experiences changes when it is moved from the private space of someone’s closet, basement, or storage to a public space, such as an archive repository. The Kida Papers at Tamiment contains some of Emi Kida’s personal notebooks. To her, these might have been a way to keep track of what daily expenses were made, the people she met with, or important events. When it is moved to an archive, the significance of these diaries is even greater. The diaries now exist as a physical memory of that period and the struggles of both Emi and Isaku Kida, her husband, to keep the New York Nichibei running. Sharing these memories builds community through the creation of a shared history.

_______________________________

The September 11^th Digital Archive

http://911digitalarchive.org/

Beginning Again

Fall semester has once again started, marking the end of summer and the beginning of the academic school year.

The end of summer also marked the ending to my initial work with the Asian CineVision collection at the Tamiment Library (TAM 416). In the span of seven months, I brought in over 300 boxes. I then proceeded to rebox them, sift through the documents, discard duplicates, and provided a general description of each box. It never ceases to amaze me how much paperwork an organization can accumulate in thirty years. What gets saved? Who decides it should be saved? And where should it all go when the organization itself no longer needs it, but still deems it historically important? Although we managed to save these records, what about the other records of other organizations or individuals?

In the fall, A/P/A continue our efforts to try and save those other records. With the help of a Metro DHP grant and two new Graduate Assistants, we will begin to survey the Asian/Pacific American collections of New York City,

Stay tuned as we prepare for new adventures in archives!

Accessing and Connecting with Archives

Visiting archives and museums can be an intimidating experience. The first step is locating the archive/museum. With the advent of the Internet, locating their address is much easier. However, navigating through the process of getting access to actual collections is a little trickier.

Earlier in the year, I went inside the New York Public Library (NYPL) to take a look at their archival collection. The building itself is a glamorous building, but finding the location of the archives was a bit more complicated. I was following a trail of directions that lead me from one room to register for a reading pass, then another to get a library card, and finally to a locked glass door. Although the employees were friendly, navigating through the large spaces to find the employees seemed daunting. As with most repositories, the collections sit behind a locked glass door, where people must be buzzed in for entry. While I understand that this if for the safety of collections, I wonder if all of it is necessary. I took the microfilm to the microfilm reader room and leafed through the letters. Despite some of these letters being personal letters, there was something very impersonal about the process of reading these letters on microfilm.

My experience at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago (CAMOC), the only Chinese American museum of the Midwest, was a vast difference. I nearly missed the building due to the construction at the front of the building, but once inside, the people were friendly and welcoming. A woman, who worked at the museum, walked around with me and highlighted some of the exhibits. Each photograph, item, or display was closely tied to her own family. As I looked at images from the late 19th century to mid 20th century, she would say, “that’s my husband’s father’s second brother’s family” or “that’s my sister-in-law.” In the upstairs exhibit, “Great Wall to the Great Lakes: Chinese Immigration to the Midwest,” the wall was filled with personal stories of family immigration. Each person had what looked like a self-written statement, and a few photos to display. The simple, personal stories made me feel as if I was somehow connected to these people, whom I had never met.

I know that there are great differences between a museum and an archive, but is there a way to create the same welcoming atmosphere? Can we cater an archive for a community, as opposed to for just researchers? If we want to build community archives, how should the building look/feel? How do we create a comfortable, open space, even if we have to build a locked glass door? How do we display the collections and exhibits so that people can feel a connection to them?

Link:
Chinese American Museum of Chicago (CAMOC)

http://www.ccamuseum.org/

“Where is the ‘heart’ of Asian America,” and what does it look like?

As part of the A/P/A Institute staff, I had the opportunity to travel to Chicago last week for the Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS) Conference. The conference title this year was “Where is the ‘Heart’ of Asian America?” As I attended the panels and talked to different people about archives, I found myself wondering where and how this “heart” existed.

In a panel discussing Vincent Chin’s death, one of my personal conference highlights, I sat and listened to Scott Kurashige, Frank Wu, Renee Tajima-Pena, and Grace Lee Boggs reflect on the changes in Asian/Pacific America after the killing of Vincent Chin. Twenty-five years after his death, I still wonder how his death exists with the memory of Asian/Pacific America. How do we capture the anger, the sadness, and the confusion of that time? In many ways, the film, Who Killed Vincent Chin? (directed by Renee Tajima-Pena and Christine Choy), serves as an archive of the incident. The documentary documents the incident, the court case, and the activism surrounding the event, but it cannot and does not document everything. Is this enough? In the conversation I had with Susana the week before, she had mentioned that it’s not necessary to capture everything. She said that if we capture just one thing, sometimes it triggers other sense. (Just as the sound of the ocean will sometimes trigger the smell of it.) In using this rationalization, does the film capture enough to trigger our other senses? The truth of the film triggers our own anger, sadness, and confusion to understand the events surrounding Vincent Chin’s death, even if we did not know about Vincent Chin before watching it.

Where does this “archive” belong? I think the greatest part of this film as an “archive” is its accessibility. For preservation issues, the original belongs in a locked vault somewhere. However there are many accessible copies of the film, which serve to carry on the messages of the film (even 25 years after the events).

Twenty five years later, I am still affected by this film. Twenty five years later, I still relate to the frustration the community felt when the two men who killed Vincent Chin did not receive proper punishment for their crimes. Twenty five years later, crimes like this still happen and still slip through the legal system. I see parallels in the verdict for those responsible for Sean Bell’s death. The film still captures a truth that I can relate to a quarter of a century later.

I hope to use this “archive” to go “beyond abstract community racial terms” (Grace Lee Boggs). This archive reminds me of the importance and power of community organizing, and “taking responsibilities for change so that other people can live in this country” (Grace Lee Boggs).

If these Blogs could talk…

“I just think that that act of making something exist in the world or ensuring that it still exists in the world, um, is really important. Really, REALLY important.”

Last Monday, April 7, 2008, I sat down with Susana Lei’ataua, A/P/A’s Artist-in-Residence for 2007-2008. The idea for this blog came from Susana’s blog with updates on the performance that she has been working on, “Breaking the Surface.”

During her kick-off event, Susana had talked about finding a recording of her grandmother’s voice at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts archive. Susana did not set out to find her grandmother, but somehow recognized the familiarity of the voice when listening to one of the records. She looked down on the list of names and found her grandmother’s name on the list. The first time I heard that story, I was struck by how personal her exploration of the archives was. My own journey into exploring archives has been discovering the six degrees of separation and how our lives as we know it know, are tied to so many other people.

“And I figure that, you know, that’s where the archiving thing comes in. Is that… That these things were left for me, whether the person recording my grandmother in the early seventies on some, you know, yacht or whatever they were doing in the Pacific from California. Whether they knew it or not, their efforts have been instrumental in me living my life living my life the way I’m living it now. And I would like to be able to do that for other people…”

Since speaking with Susana, I’ve also wondered about what archives I will leave behind. I’ve always been much more interested in hearing other people’s stories than telling my own. My interest is not so much as what I leave behind, but about making people’s stories accessible to lots of other people. And part of making theses stories accessible is not only having a physical place to store them, but also about interpreting and translating these stories so that they are understood.

“The struggle is to really get to… get to the truth of something. Get to the truth of what it is I want to be sharing… giving. And to really be vigilant about that”

While Susana struggles to find the truth of her performances, I am also struggling as an interpreter and translator of these stories. The physical archives get taken out of their original order, moved around, placed into folders named by archivists, and written up in a “finding aid.” While most archivists believe that they do this “objectively,” I question whether that objectivity exists. In processing the Asian Women United (AWU) Records at Tamiment Library, I discovered how much archivists actually reinterpret the organizations as they process a collection. My work on the collection was to, essentially, take the bits and pieces collected by various members of the organization and put them all back together into folders by subject name.

“Right now, whatever work we’re making, however we’re doing it, we cannot underestimate how far it will be heard”

Researchers who use the collection, whether they know it or not, will be influenced by my work. They will see the neatly organized folders of items I thought were important to put together. And whether they realize it or not, they will also be influenced by my desire to share women’s stories. Although there were many collections to choose from, I chose this particular collection because I love learning more about women’s work and women’s activism. And perhaps even more than learning about them, I love sharing these stories. And my version of sharing is by creating a finding aid that will be put online to making this collection accessible and visible.

“And that, you know, that was another defining moment because it was that realization that actually what you’re from is fast receding and you are here and you’re that person whether other people identify you as being representative of that or from that is really you cannot get too hung up on that because you are it… whether they want to allow you to be it or not. And I say that because you know I stand and there’s my Samoan name and then I arrive. And people… ‘You don’t look Samoan, you don’t sound Samoan, *gasp* you don’t speak Samoan. You know, it’s just all too much… for all the expectations. But none of that can alter the fact that that is my grandmother. Right, and I feel that if that’s my story, then for every other human being, we have these stories. And they exist in whatever way they exist. But we do embody something. Like I think that we are actually archives ourselves. We’re an archive… and how we choose to express that. And how we choose to, umm, I think qualify that more than quantify that. But how we choose to really share that”

To read Susana’s blog, Buffa, with updates on the progress of her work, go to:
http://www.apa.nyu.edu/AIR/2007/susana/buffa/

A project 7 years in the making…

What separates a bunch of trash from actual useful items that belong a repository? Who decides what is important and what is not important? What happens when a grassroots organization turned non-profit organization wants to throw out thirty years of history due to the lack of space?

Back in 2001, when Asian CineVision (ACV) was relocating to a new location, they faced the possibility of throwing away their old files that were taking up much needed space. As in any New York City office, space is limited, so holding on to thirty years of archives seems a bit ridiculous at times. However, A/P/A heard about the move and was able to help store part of the archives that ACV was holding on to. A/P/A had seen the value of these files and tapes that had documented this media arts organization that was trying to work with the community to allow them access to the media and give them the power to represent themselves. But what would have happened if A/P/A did not hear about this move? If A/P/A had not understood the value of the items in the boxes, would all this history be lost?

I could sit here all day and try to tell people all that ACV does and has done, but it is nothing in comparison to being able to look at the items themselves. The massive physical presence of the documents, films, tapes, and other items show how much physical space old files can take after an organization has kept files for thirty years.

At the end of January of this year, 2008, the ACV collection finally started to come into Tamiment Library at New York University. It took 7 years for A/P/A, ACV, and Tamiment to begin the physical move of the boxes into Tamiment’s possession. Since it is a large collection, enough to fill an entire room in an offsite storage, the collection has been coming in 25-boxes at a time. The collection is truly vast and amazing. Not only did ACV document the many film festivals they held, including their annual Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF), but they were also collecting events that were going on during that time. ACV has a collection of other film festival catalogues and random collections of articles about Asian Americans in the United States.

It makes me wonder what happens when no one else sees the value of these collections, and they end up in the dumpster. Is there a way to save collections before the end up in the dumpster? Whose job will it be to educate people on the importance of their own work and the importance of documenting their own existence? A/P/A has been trying to play this role, but it only stretches so far. We save as many collections that we hear about as possible, but what about the other collections? How will I be able to save other collections from being trashed? How will you? Do you even care to save them?

Some highlights from the first shipment are:
• Film Festival Catalogues from Hawaii, Singapore, Cairo, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
• A box labeled “Bill Gee,” a previous Director of ACV, with photo prints, notes, and other items that give a look at the life of a director of ACV.
• And the massive volume of files on the different film festivals that ACV put together, including AAIFF, Videoscape, the Children’s Film Series, Korean Film Series, Hong Kong Film Series, and many others.
• CCTV Production workshop notes. ACV had the first Chinese language programming in the United States, under the station name Chinese Community Television (CCTV). Every year the CCTV crew, and other professionals held a workshop to teach the community members how to shoot and edit their own videos.

For more information on Asian CineVision, visit:

http://asiancinevision.org/aboutus.html

For more information on accessing the collection at Tamiment, visit:

http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/usingtam.html

Exhibiting Archives: The Politics of Archives

Today, March 10, 2008 at 6pm, A/P/A had the official opening of the Kip Fulbeck: Part Asian, 100% Hapa exhibit. The 80 portraits each have a photograph of an individual and, in their own words and their own handwriting, their answer to “What am I?”.

The exhibit itself serves as an archive of identity. Kip spent three years collecting 1,100 portraits, and his book and the exhibit are just a small fraction of the actual portraits collected. As Kip says, “This project isn’t about race. It’s about identity. I didn’t want to do a project about race because fitting into other people’s concepts and definitions of race—or more accurately not fitting in—is what started this whole ball rolling in the first place. I wanted to do a project about who we are and what we are—in our own words, with our own definitions.

However, the exhibit itself does not document the amount of work behind the exhibit. Where do the documents of going out and searching for these 1,100 individuals exist? How did Kip select the 80 portraits to display in the exhibit? And beyond Kip’s work, I wonder how the work of the other organizations involved in the exhibit were documented. Is someone saving the email exchanges between the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) and Kip to get the exhibit running? Or how about the countless emails and phone conversations that were exchanged between JANM and A/P/A to bring the exhibit here? Or the email exchanges to put together a gallery opening? Who is collecting these “documents”? What about the work behind the exhibit that has no physical document? There are no photos that document the A/P/A staff that risked their lives to put up the 12-panel sampling in the Kimmel windows. There are no photos of the two installers putting up the exhibit at A/P/A. There were no photos taken of our A/P/A staff when she came in early and stayed late at night to make sure the installers had everything they needed. There are no photos of the security guards who came in overnight to make sure the floor, including the portraits were safe.

These are all questions that play out in the politics of archives.

* Is it important to document this process?
* Who is responsible for documenting this process?
* What does documenting all of this mean?
* What is “documented” and what is left “undocumented”?
* How do you provide enough information, without providing too much information?
* What kind of archive does this belong in? An art archive? A labor archive? An Asian American archive? A hapa archive?
* How will others know/remember this “work”?

One of my favorites:

http://www.seaweedproductions.com/i/hapa/samples/websample7.jpg

(from Kip Fulbeck’s website samples)

About the exhibit:

http://www.janm.org/exhibits/kipfulbeck/home

About the project:

http://www.seaweedproductions.com/hapa/

To purchase the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Part-Asian-100%25-Hapa-Fulbeck/dp/0811849597

“Asian/Pacific Americans” and “Archives”

“Archives.” I am starting to see this word more and more. Gmail has its own “archive” button that takes the selected messages out of your inbox and into a different location. Angryasianman.com has his own “angry archive.” The Internet archive has a “Wayback machine” that lets you look at different websites at different times. My voicemail also informs me that if I save messages, it will save them in “the archive” for 14 days. So what exactly is an archive? And how does that relate to Asian/Pacific Americans (A/PAs)? And how does it relate to working for the A/P/A Institute at NYU?

The first images that come to mind when I think of archives are dusty rooms filled with spider webs and old boxes. That’s not exactly an inviting image. So what then is it about an archive that appeals to me?

An archive, according to Merriam-Webster.com, is “a place in which public records or historical documents are preserved,” or “a repository or collection especially of information” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/archive). That definition sounds as appealing as that dusty old room.

To me, an archive is a space where a community can share memories. Unlike private collections, an archive must exist in the public with open access. This archive “documents” the past, which shapes the way we see the world today, and how we act to change the future. An archive becomes crucial for documenting A/PAs. Much of the history of A/PAs has been ignored in standard K-12 history textbooks. Outside of the Chinese railroad workers, the history of A/PAs has been left out. The archives serve as a public forum where A/PAs can be included as part of the fabric of American history along with other communities.

My work as the Graduate Assistant in Archives for A/P/A is to facilitate the process of getting community members to understand the importance of their own personal collections to turn them into public archives and to help repositories understand the significance of each of these collections.